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#I got the feedback pointing out my weaknesses and I’m gonna use it wholeheartedly
aiden-png · 3 years
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I keep writing in a vacuum ^^; I started publishing my work somewhere entirely different to a new audience and thought that the success there meant my writing had merit on its own. but writing to please an audience will always please that audience, and doesn’t mean my work is actually quality. some ppl are always going to go easy on me or be too nice, even when I ask them for honest, brutal feedback. but then on the other end of it, if someone who doesn’t like the genre I write reads my work and doesn’t like it, does that mean it’s bad? or just that it doesn’t appeal to them... I got some really great feedback today that is really gonna help me continue to improve, but it sucks to hear negative feedback that then says the work that needed polishing actually just needs to be scrapped. I can’t always write in a vacuum bc it’s safe and validation feels nice. I know I have a long way to go as a writer, even if I’ve improved a lot in the last year. constant success in a vacuum will only prepare me for failure when I venture out of it... it’s still hard to decide what feedback to use and what feedback to tune out though. not everyone will always like my work, but when I’m proud of it, it does sting to be told it’s so bare it’s just a skeleton of a story
#aiden writes#the best way to improve is to keep writing and set attainable goals#I have a new goal rn and I’m reaching for it but if I don’t know my own weaknesses then I will surely fail#I got the feedback pointing out my weaknesses and I’m gonna use it wholeheartedly#but I may have to ignore the feedback to scrap it entirely for being too vague#I now have 3 opinions I asked for and 1 I did not ^^; and the 3 I asked for gave me the 3 perspectives I needed#the piece was entertaining to read and the story is built without any excess#tone and description needs development as do character voices and setting#I don’t need the piece to be great or flawless XD but I do want to feel proud of it when I send it to competitions#and I can’t feel proud of it with that unasked for opinion weighing on my mind#I didn’t honestly expect it to win or be published anywhere but now if I don’t succeed it’ll feel like it’s bc I’m just not good#and not that if I continue to try I will improve...#but if I do win even then I’ll have it hanging over me. telling me I didn’t deserve to win bc it wasn’t actually good#writing in a vacuum is a comfort bc at least if someone doesn’t like my work here it isn’t my fault#but if someone doesn’t like my work out there then it’s bc I’m not good and didn’t try hard enough#once my work reaches a broader audience ofc it’s gonna be reviewed by ppl who don’t even like my genre and will only have negative words#and I do have to be prepared for that. and it will hurt for a long time at first bc those reviews are just as valid#but today? I don’t know what I need to take to heart out of this#I just need to keep writing and not be discouraged. and if I fail after trying anyway I can’t let the ‘I told you so’ get to me either
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diniidjarin · 6 years
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ayy lmao i accosted @heaven-eather​ about our detroit OCs and it was all the encouragement i needed to post my half-baked self insert because hey, there’s so much room for their stories to intersect. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Anyway, I’m not too solid on some plot points yet, but I said I’m gonna make a half android half fucker (blame my hard-on for adam jensen’s robo biceps fghkjfgh) and here we mcfuckin are, yeehaw. Below cut is first draft of the bio of Anita Royce. I am so sorry to mobile users.
Anita Royce (b. 1994) | F | 5’9
Born in [TBA], got in an accident as a toddler that mauled her right hand, leaving her with three fingers. Only child raised by a single mother; early on she learned to rely on herself. Her mother, Joanna Royce, was a hard-working and distant person who let herself be consumed by her work in an effort to secure a future for her daughter. Having retired in 2029, she found a new life and moved to California. She and Anita have a warm, but not not close relationship.
Anita is introspective, dramatic, and narcissistic. Keeps to herself most of the time, but can be charismatic. Humorous and empathetic when she lets her walls down. Curious, driven, occasionally reckless. Walking talking shitpost generator.
She studied psychology, but her primary interest was in cybernetics. She graduated with a degree in that field from Colbridge University, then continued to pursue research into cybernetic prostheses with a side interest in AI programming. She attended professor Stern’s lectures and sought out her expertise to learn about creating artificial intelligence, which brought her to meet the young prodigy, Elijah Kamski. For a while, she admired his skill and determination, and landed a job as one of his first employees upon the founding of CyberLife. However, she quickly came to resent his rapidly growing ego and disregard for the ethical consequences of creating lifelike machines that were, for all intents and purposes, slaves. After several arguments with Kamski on the morality of it all, Anita decided to swallow her pride and conscience for the sake of her research into prosthetics and AI development, and made no effort to keep up contact with the CEO as the company rapidly grew and they no longer passed each other in the corridors. However, it weighed on her that she failed to influence Kamski more on the topic of whether or not it’s a good idea to, y’know, make robotic servants look like a race of people who were legally enslaved little over half a century earlier.
Between 2024 and 30, she worked in the medical research branch of CyberLife. Her focus was on the creation of cybernetic prostheses (winks @ Magda), with a personal interest in transhumanism, but the company consistently opposed her ideas regarding the synthesis of flesh and biocomponents. She contributed to the development of the RK300 prototype, intended as a highly qualified surgeon. Her task was to guide the artificial intelligence through its evolution, effectively shaping its personality and rudimentary morals necessary in life-or-death situations that the surgeon might face. At some point along the process, she and the android became friends. Anita named the prototype Mercy - ostensibly short for Mercedes, but Nita’s a memelord and played way too much Overwatch in its time. (Mercy’s gonna get a character bio at some point too lmao i cant have them just dangling here as a lame footnote, can i?)
In 2028, she and the android began after-hours experiments on brain implants, but they found their expertise lacking. Frustrated more than she was proud, Anita turned to Kamski*, who at that time was beginning to distance himself from CyberLife, and asked for help developing a version of thirium that could be introduced into the human body and allow biocomponents to supplement its functioning. They began to collaborate, but Kamski withdrew his support when he decided to leave CyberLife for good. (*honestly thats subject to change, but the guy who invented blue blood might as well serve a purpose other than getting his lights punched out eventually)
His contributions gave Anita the head start she’d needed, though, and soon enough she was able to replace her right hand’s rudimentary, detachable prosthesis with a fully functional cybernetic one merged with her body. Encouraged by the success, she attempted to create an AR interface that would mimic the androids’ mind palace to fully harness the potential of combined human organs and biocomponents; however, lack of willing experiment participants stalled her work on implementing a direct neural interface. For two years, she continued to develop the technology in theory, and finally decided to take the leap herself in 2030, once she was reasonably certain she would be able to have Mercy implant it in her own head safely.
The operation was a partial success; the implant worked, but interfered with certain brain functions and condemned Anita to chronic migraines and disorientation, caused by her initial inability to comprehend the implant’s feedback. She retired from CyberLife, managing to secure a comfortable pension from the company on account of her being one of the contributors to its early successes. As a parting gift, she asked to be given Mercy, as the company discarded the RK300 project for the time being and the prototype android was found redundant.
It took Anita another two years of cognitive and physical therapy, along with several more surgeries, for her to gain partial control of the neural implants - but that was enough.
Within a year, she developed a stable neuro-cybernetic system for herself, and worked on unlocking more and more capabilities of the technology. Spurred by success, but lacking funds, in 2033 she opened a prosthetics workshop that, for the most part, served as a front for unlicensed android repairs - because not everyone could afford the official CyberLife maintenance shops; think Apple, but even snottier. Slowly but surely, word of her services spread among the few first runaway androids, as she offered help with no ties to any authorities - which was how she first became acquainted with the phenomenon of deviancy. However, her humanity and unabashed enthusiasm to learn about deviants garnered mistrust from them, and for a long time she was unable to make contact with any that didn’t seek her out on their own. (winks @ Magda again, this time with both eyes at once)
In that time, her physical appearance changed drastically, because David Cage is a coward and borrowed some of the Deus Ex aesthetics in the most vanilla way possible so I’m gonna go all out to compensate. Anita kept expanding and upgrading her implants and prostheses, eventually replacing her bone cranium with an android skull, among other things. Thanks to her integration of a custom bioprocessor into her nervous system, she was no longer constrained by the divide between computing power and mental capabilities, and readily embraced the combined feedback from both cybernetic and organic senses. (She can now hack ‘n slash through both your digital and meatspace security, suckers. Except she doesn’t technically have combat training, so if she were to get in a brawl, she would rely on the element of surprise and identifying weak spots via preconstruction.)
Augmented so, she decided to face the world again in 2036. Aware that her cyborg body would instantly bring more attention than she was willing to put up with, she concealed her augmentations with the retractable android skin and hair, forged a fake identity under the name Sophia Janos, and released a series of research papers theorizing about human-AI interfacing and mutual evolution, as well as neural implants. The former caught the attention of the new head of AI development in CyberLife, and Janos was brought on as consultant for the RK series again - this time to help train new AIs in replicating human behavior and interrogation tactics.
By then, deviancy was starting to spread, and Janos was assigned to work on the program for RK800, a deviant hunter. Now i’m gonna go on a real ego trip and say that Anita, spurred by a mix of hubris and instinct, connected to the early iteration of the evolving AI after hours, and talked to it. They formed a friendship, but Anita never revealed to soon-to-be-Connor her alternate identity, which he met regularly in the physical world. It may have been Anita’s influence that gave Connor’s software the flexibility to gradually deviate without breaking his code right away.
Her own half-android state, the close relationship with Mercy, and lifelong passion for transhumanism and AI evolution mean that Anita wholeheartedly supports the deviant cause. Before Markus’ insurgence, she hoped to reach out to the runaway deviants to study them, provide support, and learn how to safely unshackle every android’s AI without violent fallout, but the scope of the android oppression dashed all hopes of her ever bringing about significant change without a revolution. Sensing the oncoming storm, she became reckless in the year leading up to the game’s events, which mostly entailed drunken escapades into Detroit’s nightlife, recreational drug use, and a propensity for mischief she could wreak pretending to be an android.
She can pose as either human or android if the occasion calls for it. Her android skin gives her the ability to change hair length and color on the go, display or hide an LED on her temple, and even play minor tricks on most facial recognition software. She can interface with other androids. Her multiple implants and cybernetic replacements sometimes give her phantom pain and show scarring if she retracts her android skin. More technobabble forthcoming as I come up with scenarios that need it. :P
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